Playing Hard to Get: Using Scarcity to Influence Behavior - Part 1

By Stephen P. Anderson

Originally published: Oct 27, 2010

This article was originally published in UX Magazine on September 23, 2010.

Microsoft recently announced an upcoming price increase for the XBox
Live Gold membership fee. When this news broke, a few retailers such
as NewEgg responded by pushing their existing stock of gift cards
(selling the membership at the older, lower price). It was
fascinating to watch people scramble to get their hands on the
remaining gift cards. Even people who hadn’t yet tried XBox Live
purchased some of the gift cards, explaining, "they won’t be around
for long—now’s the last chance to buy a year membership at the
current price."

But why?

The simple answer is that people infer special value in something
that has limited availability. This is true in dating, commerce,
gaming and other fields. Everything from gold and diamonds to
"limited edition" candy bars to baseball cards prove this point.

But what about web applications? In most cases, we’re not dealing
with physical goods, but rather with digital content that be copied
or throttled as needed with little to no costs. Where everything is
digital and scarcity should be a quaint notion, does this same idea
hold true? And can we use this to influence behaviors? Or get people
to do more than just purchase something?

Using Scarcity in Commerce

The most obvious application of scarcity is in retail and
e-commerce. A retailer may only have few shirts left in your size. A
car dealership may only have one car on the lot with the features
you want. Collectible items fetch a lot more money in aftermarket
auctions. These same sales tactics apply to online shopping as well:
A travel site shows "only three tickets left at this price," or an
artist only has "six copies of this print remaining."

Only 3 tickets left. Better buy them now!

This idea has also been used in domain name "land grabs." There
is a very real scarcity of domain names on the Web. But custom URLs,
such as stephen.somereallycoolnewsite.com can also leverage this
scarcity to encourage signups.

Can you spot what is scarce in this homepage?

But scarcity can be used for more than simply encouraging purchasing
behaviors; because people value things that are scarce (the reason
we feel pressured to purchase something), this same principle can be
applied in other creative ways.

Using Scarcity to Increase Quality

Foodspotting is a site where people share photos of their favorite
dishes. Rather than review a restaurant, you can see and share
favorite dishes at a restaurant. You like the Pad Woon Sen at that
Thai place? Let people know by taking a photo of the dish next time
you eat there. Foodspotters, as Foodspotting users are called, love
sharing these photos. In fact, before there was Foodspotting, there
have been photo groups on Flickr where people shared interesting
photos of dishes.

So how is Foodspotting using scarcity?

If you’re making the effort to photograph your dinner, you probably
at least enjoy that dish. But what about your favorite dishes—the
ones you rave about to your friends? For these, all users get
"noms"—special ribbons reserved for those dishes you’ve tried and
loved best. But there’s a catch: Foodspotting states, &ldsquo;You only get
5 noms to start with and must earn the right to nom more foods after
that!&rdsquo;

“Noms” are reserved for my favorite dishes.

This idea could be applied in other, more familiar contexts. Imagine
YouTube limiting each person to a handful of five-star ratings per
month. Or what if Facebook limited the number of “likes” a user can
use per day? While this isn’t the behavior Facebook wants to
encourage, introducing a limited supply would change how people use
the "like" button.

Here’s another way designers are using scarcity to encourage
quality:

Remember “show and tell” from elementary school? Dribbble is a new
site where designers, developers, and other creative pros can share
sneak peeks (or “shots”) of their current work. Just as Foodspotting
encourages people to be selective about their noms, Dribbble
encourages people to be selective about what they share by limiting
how many shots users can share each month.

Dribbble’s founders don’t hide their use of scarcity to encourage
high quality submissions:

So far, the high quality of the submissions that have accumulated on
Dribbble is impressive. This is partly attributable to the caliber
of the designers who were among the first to contribute to the site,
but also to conscious planning by the site founders. Through
scarcity and other intentional design decisions, they hope that
people will post with care and maintain the quality of images
shared.

Learn More on Scarcity and Seductive Interactions

Scarcity is just one technique we can use to take advantage of
people’s desire for playfulness and their natural curiosity. Stephen
is exploring several of these techniques in his upcoming online UIE
Virtual Seminar, Leveraging Seductive Interaction Design on
Thursday, November 4. We always find Stephen’s ideas to be
inspirational and thought provoking, giving us new ways to put fun
into our designs. You won’t want to miss Stephen’s seminar.

Share Your Thoughts with Us

Have you encountered designs that use scarcity? How about different ways to encourage
users to act and participate? We’d love to see your examples.
Share them with everyone on the UIE Brain Sparks blog.